Emily Lee · Building in Public

Emily Lee · Building in Public Thinking out loud as i figure this life out. If you don't mind, stay for the real talk.

06/12/2026

If you are doing extra work and still feeling ousted at your workplace/group/university, this one is for you. You may find some clarity and some answers in this post.
I used to hear "people throw rocks at things that shine" and think it was just something people said.
Then I joined my family's business and met a supervisor who had every reason to welcome me — and didn't.
I'll never forget the Thursday she told me I was responsible for the Halloween lobby decoration. From scratch. With the holiday right around the corner. I looked at my calendar and knew: the only time I had was the weekend.
So I spent over 10 hours each day that weekend — paper, cotton, building everything by hand — and got it done.
Monday morning she walked in, saw it, and told me she "didn't mean" for me to work overtime.
I didn't say much. But I felt everything.
What made it harder was finding out later — from the students who overheard it — that she had been actively planning with another employee to pile on more work to wear me down.
That was the moment I understood what workplace bullying actually looks like. It doesn't always arrive loud.
Two things got me through it:
The belief that what doesn't break you strengthens you. And the fact that I was my mother's daughter — and I wasn't going to let her down or let her business reflect anything less than what she built.
Looking back now, I understand it differently. It wasn't really about me being the owner's daughter. It was about her fear. Fear of being replaced. Fear of not being the best in the room anymore.
I don't hate her for it. I actually feel for her.
But I'm glad I stayed standing.

Don't let how others treat you determine how you treat yourself or affect you personally, because sometimes it's their insecurity at play, not yours.

06/06/2026

I recently learned about a Vietnamese monk who set himself on fire in 1963 to protest government policy.

My honest first reaction was that I couldn’t understand it. How does someone arrive at that decision?

That question led me to a concept called identity fusion — when a person no longer sees themselves as an individual but as part of something larger. Any attack on that group feels like a personal attack. And that’s why some people defend with their bodies, their lives, everything.

What’s interesting is that not everyone is equally susceptible to this. People with high identity complexity — meaning their sense of self is built from many distinct sources, not one single group — tend to be more grounded. No single identity can absorb them completely.

The part that stuck with me most is that this mechanism doesn’t just show up in extreme cases. It’s being used on all of us, all the time — in media, in politics, in communities we belong to.

When you understand how it works, you get faster at spotting it. And that’s the whole point.

Have you noticed this showing up in your own reactions?

06/03/2026

A personal success story is real. And it is not proof that the system is fair. Let’s have a conversation about it.

There is a psychological mechanism called the endowment effect. Applied to worldview, it means people who succeed within a system have a vested psychological interest in believing that system is fair. Because if it is not, the success becomes more complicated. That is not dishonesty. It is deeply human.

But here is what the data actually shows:

Harvard economist Raj Chetty has mapped intergenerational mobility across the United States for years. The statistical relationship between where you start and where you end up is strong — stronger than the American narrative tends to acknowledge. The US has lower intergenerational mobility than Canada, Germany, and most of Scandinavia.

injustice

05/29/2026

It has been the dominant economic policy framework for decades. And it has been tested — across eighteen countries, over fifty years.

The data does not support it.

The London School of Economics found no significant increase in growth or employment following major tax cuts for the wealthy. What did increase was the income share of the top one percent.

The Congressional Research Service found the same pattern in the United States.

And then there is buy-borrow-die — the strategy where you accumulate assets, borrow against them tax-free, and pass them on at stepped-up basis so the gain is never taxed. ProPublica's analysis of actual tax records showed some billionaires paying effective rates in the low single digits. Not through reinvestment. Through financial engineering.

A theory can be logical and still be wrong. The evidence is what tells you which one you are dealing with.

I’ve changed my path more times than I am comfortable admitting.Interior design. Civil engineering. Business administrat...
05/22/2026

I’ve changed my path more times than I am comfortable admitting.

Interior design. Civil engineering. Business administration. Entrepreneurship. Real estate. Business credit. And now — content and trading.

Every time I switched, I told myself something was wrong with me. That I couldn’t commit. That I was too scattered to ever build something real.

But when I look at the full picture — every single pivot had a reason. Someone told me I was smart enough for engineering, so I tried it. One semester in, I knew it wasn’t mine. I got my real estate license, then realized I didn’t want commissions — I wanted control. I learned business credit inside out, then realized the system wasn’t built for where I was. And what started as “build a social media presence to attract investors” became something I genuinely love doing.

Every shift wasn’t a detour. It was data.

I’m sharing this because I know there are people out there who are mid-pivot right now, feeling embarrassed about it, wondering if they should have stayed the course.

You don’t owe anyone a straight line.

Changing your mind is how you find yourself.

05/20/2026

I used to think being useful was the same as being worthy.

Growing up in Taiwan, love didn’t come with words or hugs. It came through action — through showing up, chipping in, contributing. My mom was running a business, raising three kids, and caring for a sick husband. She needed people to carry weight. So I did.

What I didn’t realize until much later: I took that language everywhere. I felt guilty sitting still while someone else worked. I went out of my way to be useful to people I barely knew. Not because they needed it — but because somewhere in me, being needed felt like the only way to justify being there.

I’m only recently starting to unlearn this. Not through some personal breakthrough — but because I’m in a relationship where I’m loved for just existing. Not for what I produce. Not for how helpful I am. Just for being there.

That was new to me. Genuinely new.

If you grew up learning love as a verb — not a feeling — this one’s for you.

05/15/2026

VantageScore 4.0 is now accepted by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA. It can factor in your rental payment history — but only if your rent is actually being reported to the credit bureaus. Most isn’t.
I cover what actually changed, whether your landlord matters, which services let you start reporting yourself, and two things worth knowing before you sign up.
Not financial advice — just information worth having before you need it.

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